


Aestival

by QueenofStarlight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galra!Keith, Gen, M/M, Other, altean!lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 20:10:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11192541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofStarlight/pseuds/QueenofStarlight
Summary: adj. pertaining to, relating, designating, or of summer.Ever since the day Keith mysteriously appeared in the small backwater town the Holts called home, he's been a part of their small mismatched family. One summer, out at the Holts' summer home, Keith, Pidge, and Shiro come across a shooting star that turns out to be something much more- an alien ship. From there begins a string of events that uproots everything Keith thinks he knows about himself.T for Strong Language





	1. History

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the AO3 fic “The Sun And The Starcatcher,” which was deleted.

“Shit, mom’s gonna be so mad at us!” 

Shiro nods in agreement with Matt’s frantic statement. They’re late, very late, and while Colleen is an incredibly kind and civil woman, she can be downright terrifying when pissed off. The street lamps, so dimly lit, are the only things to guide their way as the two pedal hurriedly on their bikes. The clouds are obscuring any moonlight that could be seen on a night such as this, and Shiro guesses it must be past nine by now. Their curfew it at eight. He pedals faster.

The moon is just starting to peek out from behind the clouds when Matt yelps, veering off the road and into a shallow ditch, letting out a string of curses that Shiro’s sure he’d get smacked for if he said them at home. “Why’d you veer off? Did you hit a pothole or something?” He asks, skidding to a stop near his friend. Matt climbs up from out of the ditch, abandoning his bike, and points toward a vaguely human-shaped lump in the street. “I was avoiding that!” Shiro gets off his bike and lays it down on the ground, taking a few steps toward the lump. “Matt, it’s a little kid.”

“Why the heck is there a little kid just lying in the middle of the road? Did they get hit by a car?! Are they dead?!” Matt questions, obviously panicking. Shiro kneels down next to the kid, a small boy with a bird’s nest of fluffy hair, and confirms that he’s still breathing. “He’s not dead you idiot. He probably just got lost and passed out from exhaustion.” Matt calms down slightly, hurrying to Shiro’s side and adjusting his glasses from where they’d been thrown off-center from his crash. “So, what do we do with him?” Shiro puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, gently shaking him. 

The boy blinks his eyes open and starts, scooting away from Shiro and Matt the second he’s all the way awake, pulling his knees to his chest and glaring at them. Shiro notices the bruises and scratches covering the boys legs and face, a few with dried blood sticking to them. “Hey, are you lost? We can try and take you home if you want.” Shiro asks, inching the smallest bit closer. The boy doesn’t move from his spot, and doesn’t say anything. “Can you tell us your name at least?” 

“Keef.” He says after a moment’s hesitation, his voice quiet and warbled, as if his English wasn’t his first language.

“Keith, huh? I’m Shiro, and that guy’s Matt. Can you tell us your last name?”

Shiro sighs when Keith shakes his head violently from side to side, his hair poofing up even more with the movement. “Don't remember.” He says.

Matt makes a noise of disbelief. “You don’t remember your last name?” He says, tone not as calm or level as it could have been.

The boy shakes his head again, and Shiro sighs. “Shit, kid.” Matt nudges him in the arm for swearing and Shiro resists the urge to smack him back for being a hypocrite. “Well, do you wanna come home with us? Our mom can help you. Plus we’re late, we need to go home.” 

A full thirty seconds passes in silence, during which time Matt lets out a frustrated groan and goes to drag his bike out from the ditch. “You can’t just stay here in the middle of the road, kid. It’s not safe. There’s coyotes out here, and it’s probably gonna rain. Just come with us.” Shiro pleads, knowing it won’t be long before they have to simply give up on the kid and go home. The boy fidgets nervously, presumably pondering his options, until he finally stands up, latching one of his hands onto Shiro’s sleeve. “Okay.” Matt and Shiro both relax, relieved. 

The journey back to Matt’s house takes ten minutes longer since they have to ride slower and more carefully with Keith clinging to Shiro’s back, and they’re already anticipating their scolding when they park their bikes against the side of the porch. Colleen Holt reacts immediately when they step through the front door, demanding to know why they're so incredibly late getting home, but the tense tone of her voice fades away when she catches notice of Keith standing behind them, tiny and looking like he's about to fall asleep again at any moment. “Boys, who is this?” 

“His name is Keith, mom. We found him sleeping in the middle of the road.” Matt explains.

“Matt almost ran him over.” Shiro points out, earning a glare from his friend.

“Shut up! It was dark!”

“Boys.” They both fall silent, and Colleen crouches down next to Keith with a gentle smile. “Hello, Keith. My name is Colleen. Are you hungry or thirsty?” Keith shakes his head, and Colleen nods in recognition. “Do you want to get some sleep? You look very tired.” At that, Keith yawns, that being the only thing Colleen needs as confirmation. “Takashi, go ahead and take him upstairs. He can sleep in Katie’s room, she’s passed out in the living room and likely won’t wake up again until morning.”

Shiro leads Keith up the stairs to Katie’s bedroom, Keith collapsing onto her toddler bed with a tired sigh and passing out almost instantly, leaving Shiro to carefully nudge him into place under the covers. When he gets back downstairs, Colleen is talking quietly into the phone, Sam at her side flipping through the phone book, Matt in the living room poking at two-year-old Katie’s sleeping form with a grin on his face. Katie doesn’t react to her brother at all, out cold. “How can a toddler sleep so well? She’s like a rock!” Matt says incredulously, twirling one of his sister's golden-brown curls around his finger.

“Yeah, well, with a brother like you, maybe she does it so she doesn’t wake up every time you come in making a ruckus.”

“Oh shut up Shiro.” 

They stay there for another ten minutes, patiently waiting while Colleen and Sam called person after person, only half of them picking up so late in the evening. As it turns out, no one in town knows who Keith is, even when they call the Sheriff's station to ask if there are any children missing nearby. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to let Keith stay here until we figure it out. Go to bed boys.” Colleen instructs Shiro and Matt, planting a kiss on both their foreheads and sending them upstairs.

That night, Shiro finds him awake even hours after they’ve all gone to sleep. He wonders where Keith came from, why he can’t remember his last name - though it could simply be that he's too young to even know it. Shiro wonders how Keith got beat up so bad, why he looked like he hadn’t bathed in a week or more, why he showed up so mysteriously in their tiny backwater town where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. The questions were never-ending, and Shiro lets out a sigh, telling himself to wait ‘till morning to try and answer any of them. 

 

When morning does come, Shiro wakes up uncharacteristically early for a Sunday, not waiting to shake Matt into consciousness before he’s tiptoeing down the hall to Katie’s room. He inches the door open as silently as possible, only to find the bed an empty mess of tangled blankets. Shiro heads downstairs, following the newer smells of bacon and herbs, and finds Keith in the living room, sprawled out on his stomach and flipping through a picture book with Katie. His hair is no longer a greasy mess, and his wounds have been patched up with Spiderman-themed bandaids, so Shiro assumes he’s gotten a bath from Colleen. 

As Shiro steps into the kitchen, he’s greeted by a glass of milk that is more or less thrusted into his hands as Colleen maneuvers around him toward the fridge, pulling out a cucumber and a few other vegetables before shuffling back over to the stove to flip the eggs. She smiles sweetly to Shiro as she passes and he mumbles a “good morning” from behind the mouth of his glass. Once he’s finished drinking nearly half, he moves out of her way and takes a seat at the dining table, watching Keith and Katie interact. “Did he tell you anything else about himself?” 

Colleen sighs, stirring a couple sausage links around in a pan. “Unfortunately, no. He doesn’t remember his surname, or the names of his parents, or if he has any family at all. I think he may have amnesia. He doesn’t recognize the name of our town, or the U.S. The only thing he could tell me was his name, and I honestly wonder if he’s even pronouncing it right.” She says, passing Sam a plate of eggs cooked sunny-side-up as he walks in, kissing her on the cheek and quickly moving out of her way to sit across from Shiro. “Anyhow, we’re going to take him up to the ranger station just out of town and have a talk with the state troopers. Perhaps they’ll know something.”

Shiro and Sam remain quiet for a while, leaving Colleen to her cooking. Shiro reads the back of Sam’s newspaper for a few moments before his gaze finds its way back to Keith and Katie, and he leans his head on his hands as he watches them. 

Katie is giggling, her small hands nestled deeply into Keith’s bushy hair as she kneads it with her fingers much in the same way a cat would knead a blanket, their picture book now abandoned in favor of other fun. Keith leans into Katie’s hands with a smile, and Shiro assumes she must’ve been holding his hair uncharacteristically gently for him to be enjoying the action. Sam follows his gaze and grins. “They’ve been like that ever since we woke up this morning. It seems Keith has a way with Katie that neither of you boys happen to have. She likes him.” He says, making Shiro frown at the suggestion that Katie liked Keith more than him, even though it was probably true true.

“Whatever. She’s too little to understand that yanking people’s hair and biting them when they try to hold her isn’t a good way to make friends.” Sam laughs at that, and Shiro sulks a little more.

It isn’t much longer before breakfast is officially ready and Colleen is shouting up the stairs for Matt to get out of bed. Shiro watches his surrogate mom head into the living room, Keith’s smile fading away as she approaches. Katie refuses to let go of Keith’s hair when Colleen tries to pick her up. Keith ends up carrying her to the dining room all on his own, letting her sit on his lap as Colleen takes the seat beside him in an attempt to get Katie to eat. Matt comes rushing down the stairs only moments later and the rapidfire chaos of having three boys and a cranky two year old at the same table ignites, reducing the previous peace and quiet to merely a daydream. 

 

An hour later, everyone’s piling into the Holts’ stationwagon, Sam wrestling Katie into her car seat while Matt complains about being tired, getting a motherly staredown for the complaint and an offhand comment about how he has no right to complain about exhaustion considering how far past curfew they’d come home the night before- nearly three hours later than they were supposed to. 

Matt snaps his mouth shut at that and Shiro seizes the moment. “Get rekt.” They shove each other back and forth a bit before Colleen pushes their heads apart and nudges them both toward the car. Matt and Shiro slide into the farthest seat back and Shiro watches as Keith fiddles with his seatbelt confusedly. “Here, you use it like this.” Shiro says, buckling the strap around Keith’s tiny frame and grinning at how positively curious Keith’s expression is, his hands poking at the buckle. Once he figures out how to unbuckle it, he spends a good minute simply buckling and unbuckling the seatbelt, only stopping when Sam dutifully explains why he needs to keep it on. 

As they finally get everyone buckled in and settled down - Katie making it the most difficult action known to man - the car starts moving, and they slowly maneuver their way out of their small neighborhood and through the town. Keith watches out the window with wide eyes as the houses are steadily replaced with the diner, mail center, the police station, and eventually bleed out into long lines of trees and a faraway view of the river that cuts around it all. Keith watches as if he’s never seen such buildings before in his life, and Shiro watches him with a smile.

The drive to the State Patrol Department is a long one, and hardly fifteen minutes pass before Katie starts to get bored and fussy, grumbling in her indecipherable toddler language. Keith ends up satiating her frustrations by scooting into the seat closer to her when they come to the next stoplight, letting the two-year-old latch her fingers onto his hair like that morning when Shiro had come downstairs. After that, it's uncharacteristically peaceful, with only Matt and Shiro’s offhand chatter and Sam and Colleen’s quiet discussion about the state patrol to cut through the otherwise silent car ride. 

When they do finally arrive, Katie and Keith are asleep, Katie’s fingers still tangled in Keith’s hair. “Keith, sweetie, we’re here.” Colleen says, nudging him awake. Keith blinks sleepily and yawns, the movement waking Katie, who starts to grumble and fuss. Shiro and Matt let out groans of loathing as she starts to yell, not wanting to let go of Keith’s hair so he could get out of the car. Much like that morning, Keith ends up carrying Katie into the station, Colleen hovering nearby in case she got too heavy for him. (Shiro’s impressed by how strong Keith is for his size.)

Shiro and Matt are left on a bench in the front office with Katie, having effectively bribed her out of Keith’s arms with the promise of letting her play with Matt’s Gameboy. Katie watches Shiro play with acute attention, observing him peacefully and only reaching for the device a couple of times. Matt lets her mess around with his own Gameboy after a few games, watching her turn it on and off repeatedly with the same fascination Keith had found in the car seat belts. She takes out the batteries at one point - something which happens quite often, and with many more devices than just a Gameboy - and Shiro and Matt watch her put them back in exactly as they’d been before. 

When Colleen, Sam, and Keith reappear, Katie and Matt have fallen asleep nestled up against Shiro’s side while he plays Animal Crossing, and when he looks up at his surrogate parents, he notices Keith huddling close to Colleen’s side with a grim expression and the remnants of tears. 

“Well?” Shiro asks, kicking at Matt's leg to wake him up while Sam takes Katie into his arms.

Colleen smiles, and both Shiro and Matt notice that it isn’t her true smile. “There aren’t any kids missing in any of the nearby states that match Keith’s description. I’m afraid he’s got nowhere to go.” She says, gripping Keith’s hand tighter. Keith looks like he’s trying his absolute hardest not to cry.

“If he doesn’t have anywhere to go, can’t he just stay with us?” Matt says.

Everyone turns to look at him. Matt frowns and scoots backward a bit. “What?! Katie likes him! And Katie doesn’t like _anyone!_ He looks a lot like Shiro too, and you said yourself that the foster care system in America sucks ass!”

Colleen shoots him a look at that, but doesn’t say anything, her brows knitting together in thought. She isn’t in thought for long before she smiles from ear to ear. “Well, what a good idea that is!” Kneeling down next to Keith, Colleen ruffles his hair and lets his hand fall out of hers. “Keith, how would you like to be a permanent member of our family?”

Without even a moment’s hesitation, Keith nods violently, the tears he’d been desperately holding back finally falling. Colleen wraps him up in a hug and carries him on her hip, letting him smush his face into her blouse as Sam, Matt, and Shiro are dragged into the hug, Katie waking up to grab at Keith’s hair again and fuss about the fact he wasn’t giving her attention.

That night, when Shiro passes by Katie’s bedroom, Colleen is crouched by the toddler bed, Katie and Keith huddled together under the covers and fast asleep, peaceful as can be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiro is 14, Matt is 13, Keith is around 5, and Katie is 2.


	2. Arrival

Keith looks out at the scenery flying by his window, tall evergreen trees lining the road on both sides and tiny orange marigolds scattered in the bright ferns, everything so green and familiar. A sign comes into view, its rusted metal spelling out “Lake Lion - ½ Mile” in lopsided white letters. The sky is pale blue and cloudless above them, and Keith sighs, wanting nothing more than to get out of the car. They’ve been driving for nearly four hours now, and his legs are starting to fall asleep where they’re tangled up in Pidge’s, the both of them having discarded their seatbelts a while back to make for comfort and decent entertainment.

“True or false: most of the dust in an average person’s home is made up of human skin,” Pidge asks, staring down at the handful of trivia cards they’re holding. 

Keith barely takes a moment to ponder the answer. “True.” he replies, holding a hand out to take the card from Pidge who frowns before passing it over. 

Shiro makes a noise of vague disgust from the front seat, looking back at them through the rearview mirror. “That’s a disgusting fact I really didn’t need to know, you two.” Pidge and Keith both smirk at that, the pile of already-completed trivia cards toppling off their legs as the car hits a pothole. 

“Oh trust me Shiro, we’ve got some Fun Facts in here that would gross you out _way_ more than learning your skin turns into dust bunnies when it flakes off your body.” 

Keith nods in agreement, and Shiro shakes his head with an exasperated sigh. “I honestly don’t doubt it.” They hit another pothole and Shiro curses under his breath. 

Keith moves on to a new trivia card, “True or false: the human neck has the same amount of vertebrae as the neck of a giraffe.” 

“True.” Pidge replies without hesitation, not even bothering to look up from where they’re hunched over in their seat, trying to pick up the cards that fell onto the floor. 

“Correct.” 

“How do you guys even _know_ these things?” 

“Lots of trivia, Shiro, lots of trivia.” Pidge says, a hint of amusement in their voice.

“And Buzzfeed.” Keith adds. “We’re probably the Kings of random knowledge by now.” 

“I wouldn’t doubt it. But trivia and random knowledge aside, we’re here!” 

Keith and Pidge both let out sighs of relief as the summer house comes into view from behind the veil of trees and thick forest, its familiar pale green accents and dandelion-filled yard sticking out against the blue of the sky and the gold of the way-too-tall field grass surrounding the area. 

Shiro pulls up in front of the garage doors and parks, barely shutting off the engine before Keith and Pidge are throwing the doors open and getting out of the car, glad to finally be off the road. “Damn, it seems like being in a car for four hours wouldn’t make your legs more sore than they’d be after walking a marathon.” Shiro says, not bothering to comment on Keith and Pidge’s hurried exits. Keith groans in agreement, his face scrunching up in pain. 

“My leg fell asleep!” 

“Rest in pieces, mate.” Pidge says in reply. 

Shiro sighs, “Do you ever stop with the memes?” 

“Nope.”

Shiro gives them a deadpan look and then climbs out of the car, muttering something about why he even bothers asking, and spends a good minute fiddling with the trunk before it finally opens. Pidge looks ready to comment on the fact that Shiro _really_ needs a new car - he’s had this one since he was 16, and it’s a piece of crap - but Shiro levels them with a stare, as if expecting it, and Pidge throws up their hands in surrender. 

It doesn’t take long for the three of them to gather up all their belongings and drag it all up to the house. Keith and Pidge share an annoyed look as Shiro fumbles around looking for the house keys, and then the door is swinging open, the smell of wood and stale air floating out. 

Keith takes a moment to take in everything about the house- the hand carved wooden furniture, the paintings of forest and lake scenery on the walls, the photographs from every summer sat atop the rustic fireplace. It’s their home away from home, and the atmosphere in the house mirrors that feeling back to Keith as Pidge rushes past him to drag open the blinds, warm sunlight bathing the living room and front hall in a golden glow as the sun begins to set outside.

“Keith, c’mon! Help me carry this shit upstairs!” Pidge says, gesturing to their too-big suitcase.

Keith rolls his eyes and grips one side of Pidge’s suitcase with his free hand, his own smaller duffel bag thrown over his shoulder. “Why did you pack so much stuff, anyways?”

“We’re going to be here for three months. There’s no way I wasn’t going to bring all my tech stuff with us. C’mon Keith, it’s like you don’t even know me!” 

“Nah, I just thought you would’ve learned modesty after hitting puberty.” 

Pidge punches him in the arm and Keith laughs, the two of them slowly dragging their things up the two flights of stairs and into the attic bedroom they share. Keith lets go of Pidge’s suitcase once they reach the top of the stairs and the blonde drops it unceremoniously on the floor next to their bed, flopping down onto the dust-covered forest green bedspread with a sigh.

Keith sets his bag next to his own bed across the room, and he looks around, taking in any of the small, miniscule changes that have happened since the summer before.

A thin layer of grey dust covers everything, and Keith can already feel his nose itching. The “My Chemical Romance” poster he’d put up two summers ago is now on the floor, the tape finally having given out, and there’s a tiny mouse hole in the wall beside the dresser that he makes a mental note to tell Shiro about later. Otherwise, everything looks exactly the same as they’d left it - beds unmade, sheets balled up and half on the floor, books and toys they haven’t touched in year stuck in corners of the room and nicks in the walls where things were once thrown at them. 

“Man, I know we just came here last summer, but doesn’t it feel like it’s been an eternity?” Pidge says, sitting up in their bed with a nostalgic grin Keith doesn’t often see on their face. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, the same look mirroring on his own features. “Do you think Shiro will be mad if he finds out we left a window slightly open all year?” 

Keith gestures to the window in question, the latch unhooked and the frame slightly ajar, too old to have swung open further due to wind but still showing signs of damage in the discoloring of the wood of the sill and the tiny rainwater stains on the wall and floor below it. Pidge glances over at the window and looks at it for a long moment before turning back to Keith and shrugging.

“What Shiro doesn’t know can’t hurt him. Just cover it up with a rug or something.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to get a rug?” 

“Steal the one from the bathroom. Shiro uses the one downstairs anyways. He’ll never notice.” 

A few minutes later, the stain on the floor is covered up by the green bath mat from their bathroom, a row of Lego spaceship models Pidge found in one of their old toy piles now on the windowsill, and the “My Chemical Romance” poster taped up on the wall. Keith dumps his luggage onto his bed and leans his empty suitcase up against the poster to make the clutter in the area less conspicuous, and Pidge dubs it good enough.

They spend the next ten minutes sorting through the clothes they’d hurriedly shoved into their suitcases before leaving and less-hurriedly shoving them into their respective dressers. A good few shirts have to be traded out between suitcases, some of their clothes having been mixed up when they were packing. Keith suspects it was because they’d washed their laundry together the night before and neglected to sort through it (or pack, in general) until an hour before they were meant to leave town. 

Keith also suspects it’s because both he and Pidge get most of their clothes as hand-me-downs from Shiro and Matt, despite the size difference between all four of them. It sometimes gets hard to distinguish which clothes were passed down to who.

Eventually they’ve put away all their clothes, and Keith helps Pidge unload the rest of the things they brought with them - mostly computer parts, along with tools, their several laptops, and a few other contraptions Keith recognizes but still doesn’t truly understand, even after having watched Pidge build, dismantle, and rebuild all of them over the years. Shiro comes in when they’ve got at least half the floor of the attic covered in equipment, making a face at the chaos that Pidge simply shrugs at. 

“It’s organized chaos to me,” Pidge says. “Guess I’m just smarter than you guys.”

Shiro and Keith both shoot them a look, but neither of them disagree, which brings a wide smile to Pidge’s face. 

After a bit of a contemplation, Pidge shoves everything back into their suitcase, and Shiro and Keith help carry it back downstairs, where Pidge proceeds to dump it all out onto the living room floor instead. Shiro curls up in one of the armchairs with a copy of The Three Musketeers, and Pidge sits down amidst their chaos of parts and gets to work, tuning out the rest of the world. 

Keith climbs back up the stairs to find his art supplies and iPod, returning to the living room to idly doodle Pidge’s crouched-over form, the velvety voice of Michael Buble blocking out the noise of tools and frantic typing. 

The three of them stay like that for a long while: Shiro reading his book, somehow managing to tune out the world despite his lack of music, Keith drawing Pidge from different angles as they moved around in front of him, Pidge working on the computer they’ve been building. The peace is only broken when Pidge suddenly groans in frustration, flopping on their back over their equipment in such a way that has Keith wondering how they’re not uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, pulling out his earbuds. Pidge fixes him with a half-assed glare.

“I’m missing pieces. Key pieces.” they say. “And I honestly can’t remember if I forgot them or I just didn’t have them in the first place, but either way it’s really annoying.” 

Shiro, ever the helpful soul, is (of course) the first to offer a solution. “Well, why don’t you take a break from the computer building for tonight? Tomorrow we can go visit the junk shop in town and see if they have any of the parts you need.”

“Gee, thanks for calling my equipment junk.”

“You know what I mean.”

Pidge shrugs, but doesn’t say anything else, and Keith can see traces of a smirk on their face. Shiro snaps his book shut and stands, carefully maneuvering around the mess on the floor and out of the living room, setting his book on the dining table with a glance out the window.

“It’s starting to get dark out, why don’t we make some dinner and set up for stargazing? I brought the telescope from the lab for the summer.” he suggests.

Mention of the telescope alone is enough to get both Keith and Pidge up and out of their seats. It isn’t often that Garrison University rents out the astrophysics lab’s Celestron NexStar 130 SLT telescope, and the fact that a student like Shiro was trusted with such an expensive piece of lab equipment is a miracle in itself. So it’s understandable that they’re both excited, especially when they get to use it out in no-man’s-land, where there’s no light pollution to block out the stars.

Shiro leaves to gather the telescope equipment. Keith and Pidge shove past each other the stairs as they follow, heading out onto the second-story balcony while Shiro heads to his room. The sky is still illuminated in pastel pink and lavender hues, even though the sun has dipped out of sight beneath the trees. And, despite the waning sunlight, the stars are still clearly visible. It’s a beauty that can’t be achieved back home, where there’s too much light pollution for the stars to be recognizable even on the clearest of nights.

Keith and Pidge are arguing over whether a particular grouping of stars is Lupus or not when Shiro joins them, lugging a heavy box. The three of them get to work setting up the telescope and by the time they’ve finished, the light from the sunset is very nearly gone, the white of the stars now even brighter than before.

Shiro takes first look through the telescope and confirms that the constellation they’d been looking at is indeed Lupus. Keith shoots Pidge a smug look and they stick their tongue out at him in return. 

“You’re so petty about losing.” Keith says, bumping Pidge with his shoulder.

“Only because you’re petty about winning.” 

“Since when was it even a competition?” Shiro asks. Keith and Pidge both shrug. 

They take turns looking through the telescope, identifying a couple of other constellations: Libra, Ursa Minor. Shiro gets lost in telling a story from university, featuring Matt, their lab crew, and a lot of drunken star-gazing while someone (they all know the someone is Matt, even if Shiro kindly avoids saying so outright) swore they’d seen a UFO and ended up pissing their pants on the dormitory rooftop, almost knocking their stolen telescope off the roof in the process. 

Pidge is trying to get more embarrassing stories about Matt out of Shiro when Keith spots it.

He’s looking through the telescope, admiring how clear Lupus is, when he notices one of the stars shining brighter than all the others. Keith watches as it gets bigger, and it what seems like only a few short seconds, the star is turning bright yellow and growing clear enough to where he can tell it’s most definitely not a star. He looks away from the telescope, watching the object, and before he can so much as alert his siblings, the object is crashing into the shore on the other side of the lake. 

“...what the fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith is 17, Pidge is 14, and Shiro is 26.


End file.
